Company says it applied for permit before Plaza restaurant blast

KMBC 9 News has obtained documents showing Heartland Midwest, the company that Missouri Gas Energy claims struck a gas line near JJ's Restaurant, applied for a city excavation permit on Feb. 6.

Heartland Midwest said it also applied for a traffic-control permit on Feb. 13, which was six days before the blast.

An attorney for the company, Brad Russell, said the existence of the documents proves the company had the permits required to do underground work in the area on Feb. 19, the day J.J.'s was destroyed in an explosion and fire. One woman died and more than a dozen people were injured.

"It was our understanding that if we had submitted an application, for permission to excavate, that we could begin that work," Russell said.

City records indicated that the city received the faxes on the days they were sent, but the fax machine didn't print them out. The City Manager's Office said the company didn't have an approved permit, but said the company has never been denied permits in the past.

Russell said Heartland Midwest resubmitted the applications on the day after the explosion, but it was an effort to help the city find its missing paperwork.

"So we tried, as an effort to help them, to send them -- again -- the same information we sent on the 6th and the 13th--together with the fax return receipt that showed plainly we had submitted them on the 6th and the 13th," Russell said.

911 records indicated that a man from a "utility contracting company," called emergency officials at 4:54 p.m. to report the crew had "hit a line."

It is believed that the caller was an employee of Heartland Midwest.

The restaurant exploded a little more than an hour later after several reports of a natural gas smell in the area.

Missouri Gas Energy workers were on the scene trying to shut down the gas line when the blast took place.

The documents obtained by KMBC's Micheal Mahoney both showed the papers were received at City Hall the same day they were submitted by a fax machine belonging to Heartland Midwest.

Russell said the company has remained silent until this point as it took care of its employees injured in the blast and its inability to get to the work scene.

He said there is no solid proof that company workers struck a gas line at all.

"As you listen to (the 911 tape), it is clear that he doesn't know. There was no evidence he could see at the time," Russell said.

He also referred to a photo that indicated that Heartland Midwest was drilling below the gas line. Utility crews regularly bore small holes to check where other utility lines might be. At the location near the blast site, painted stripes indicated that the gas line had been marked as 24 inches under the road.

Russell said Heartland was doing horizontal drilling 37 inches under the road, a whole foot lower than the gas line.

"We believe the marking of 37 inches, as exhibited in the photograph that we produced, shows the marking of what we believe our depth to have been, and our position, which would have been beyond the line," he said.

The investigation into what caused the leak and explosion continues. The area around the former restaurant site has been sealed off by a fence since the day after the explosion. The heavy snowstorms have prevented much work at the scene.

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